


The World Is Not Enough

by twofoldAxiom



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aliens Am I Right, Alternate Universe, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Extremely Dubious Consent, I Literally Have No Idea If That Was Rapey Or Just Weird, M/M, Mild Blood, Mostly Cutting And Stabbing Because It's Spades Fucking Stabhappy Slick, Physical Abuse, Power Imbalance, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 21:14:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6094211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofoldAxiom/pseuds/twofoldAxiom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Midnight Crew take in a wayward troll and make him one of their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World Is Not Enough

_This fucking kid._

There were a lot of words for him, but those three came up the most, like a mantra. To be fair, he couldn’t really be a kid; no kid really ever got off Alternia, no kid could make it to Derse- much less its moon- in one piece, and no kid could meet the sharp end of one of Spades Slick’s knives and still look him in the eye with more fury than fear. The blood on the knife was hot and Dersite red. Grounds for culling in Empire space, still weird in a place like Midnight City, and it gave Slick pause just as much as the glare, just long enough for the troll to draw a wickedly sharp sickle that he swung right for Slick’s throat.

Droog stopped him with his bull cane, so close that Slick could have licked the blade, and Boxcars picked him up with one, massive hand. He bit and spat and called him a fat cocksucker while Slick pulled a cigar out from somewhere in his jacket and lit it, taking a drag and letting the smoke curl out past his teeth.

“What’s your name, kid?” He asked.

“I’m nine, you shitfuck. I’m not a kid.” He spat back.

Slick narrowed his eyes and, viper-quick, drew the edge of his knife across one thin cheek. Red beaded in the line. “I’d answer properly if I was you, ‘less you wanna be Nine-You-Shitfuck for the duration of your stay.”

“What makes you think I’ll stay?”

Slick blew smoke in his face, told him about the troll population of Midnight City, growing fast; told him about the last few mutants that thought they could make it here alone and what happened to them at the hands of the commonfolk and the Crew alike. The troll narrowed his eyes, thought about it, complied.

“Karkat.” He spat, as if the word itself were asking to fight right off his tongue. Didn’t give a caste name or a title; either didn’t have a story yet or, more likely, with blood like that, didn’t want to tell it.

Slick laughed like a cross between crunching gravel and a cough. The look it got him was wide-eyed in the way of someone too utterly flabbergasted to even ask if you’re kidding, before Droog clubbed Karkat in the back of the head with his cane before he could swing his sickle again, and Boxcars carried him over his shoulder. They headed back to the hideout.

~!~

‘Karkat’ didn’t stick. None of them bothered remembering it.

There were just enough trolls and troll-haters in Midnight City that he had to stay if he was smart. Being with the Crew was less dangerous for a red-eyed troll than the streets, so long as he bore whatever indignities were heaped on him. Harmless for the most part: Kid, Boy, Nines, Shitfuck. Sometimes not so harmless, Slick sticking him with a knife somewhere tender if he talked back on a bad night. Sometimes that sickle would make a reappearance, but Droog would talk him down on those nights if it did.

They learned he was pretty handy with that sickle over time; swung it with more purpose than it had seemed that first night. They started calling him Thresher, and the first time he heard it he looked at them like he’d found family.

Thresher Nines became known as the odd-one-out of the Midnight Crew, never really quite part of the ensemble. Some said their newest had always been there, out of sight. Some said he was Slick’s pet project. Whatever he was, he and his sickle- black-tarnished with time and blood- became a name of fear in Midnight City, almost as much as the Crew proper.

That wouldn’t stop Slick from sticking him every now and again, proved by the scars he’d accrued along his sides, along his arms, on his thighs. As time went on, he did so less and less, but still.

“Just to keep you on your toes, kid.” He was always Kid to him, rarely ever Nines, rarer still Thresher, never Karkat. He would growl and clutch the wound, and the handle of his sickle, but Droog didn’t need to talk him down anymore. Slick noticed everything he did and would be able to stop him without help, now that they’d been around each other long enough to shoot and cut people down without words like lethal clockwork.

It only helped the rumour mill turning, when Thresher didn’t disappear with most of the other unlucky souls that spent too long hanging around the Midnight Crew. Some said he was just too good to go down in a raid, and he was good, very good, earned his wretched stripes the hard way. Others added more torrid theories.

They heard of course. The rumours were harmless, gave them more mystique. Slick didn’t mind them.

Though one stepped too far soon enough, and Thresher did.

~!~

“What the fuckin’ _fuck_  were you _thinkin’?!_ ”

Slick tangled his hand in Thresher’s shirt and pulled him spitting-close, drove three inches of steel into his side. “You fuckin’ _idiot_ , puttin’ yourself out there like some kind’a _amateur_ , _-_ “ Stab, stab, _stab_ , amid little grunts of pain as Thresher tried to break a grip like iron.

Droog placed a cool hand on Slick’s shoulder, cooler voice against his auricular. “Relax, Slick.”

He shrugged the hand off and growled at Droog, but dropped Thresher bleeding and groaning to stagger back to his feet, firebright eyes boring into Slick’s silvery ones from a face almost the same shade of black.

It had been a sweep, a whole sweep, since they’d first taken him in. It was a whole sweep of teaching him how to get in and out of places in silence, how to take someone out without them knowing before they hit the floor, how to clear up when it was all over.

Most importantly, they’d taught him how to be seen only just enough. They were professionals, and Thresher had made a rookie mistake. Slick snarled. “Can’t fuckin’ _believe_ the almighty- did you learn _nothin’_ -“

“I learned _fine_.” Thresher growled. “You know as well as I do that that that particular _fuckmonger_ deserved it.”

Thresher bit back a lot, but once he’d become part of the Crew it was always obscenity and empty bluster when faced with Slick. Now there was real bite behind it, even while he shook with fatigue and his shivery hands had blood running between the fingers. His voice kept rising. “Do you know what they’ve been saying about me? Saying I don’t have my place here, saying I didn’t fucking _earn my place here with a body count_ -“

Slick rolled his eyes and snarled. “Oh, so a couple'a hurt _feelin’s_ is suddenly enough to warrant forgettin’ to clean up after a sloppy job like that?”

“They called me your _whore!_ ” He’d stopped shaking, all his white little teeth bared. “Said Thresher Nines is only still with the Crew not because I’m one of the deadliest motherfuckers in the city, but because I’m Spades Slick’s personal _cumbucket!_ ”

“And I will _damn_ well make that true before I kill you myself if you _ever_ pull shit like this again!”

Droog’s cough snapped them out of it. “Slick, Thresher, come on. This lovers’ spat is embarrassing everyone.” Droog stepped between them, straight-back and heavy-lidded eyes. Slick realized there was spit in the corner of his mouth, and he straightened up, wiping it off with his thumb. He breathed. Thresher still had his horns lowered, but with a look from Droog, he straightened up as well.

They weren’t kids, but they weren’t about to let it go gently. They met each other’s eyes, and there was fire between them. Neither stopped scowling. Slick spoke first. “Bandage that up and never pull a stunt like that again, do I make myself clear?”

Thresher nodded. Slick snarled again. “I said, do I make myself clear?”

“You got it, Slick.”

~!~

There were no more sloppy kills, though every now and again, someone not on Droog’s lists would disappear. It wasn’t an unusual thing in the city, and the carved symbol on the wall left no mistake as to who was responsible and why. Thresher was making it patently clear that he’d earned his place as a member of the Crew.

It was testing Slick’s patience.

“What’re you playin’ at.” Slick slurred. He never drank enough to be drunk, but this time he was close, and it showed in the way he glared balefully over the table and his words came out thicker than usual. Thresher knocked back his own whiskey, his skin gone the perfect black of adult moult so it looked like it was swallowed by a shadow, but for the pale grey of the inside of his mouth. He’d been called up here alone, and his sickle hung at his hip. It looked small compared to him now, where it had once looked oversized and unwieldy.

He wasn’t sure if he could block Slick’s knives with it, but he’d never been a drinker and now he’d had enough to drink with him that he might be stupid enough to try, or at least stupid enough to run his mouth off.

He levelled his gaze with Slick’s, lips a tight line over his teeth. “You want to know what? I’m making sure I’m respected. I refuse to let these panrotten fuckblisters call me anything less than what I am. I’ve fought too hard and too long to be disrespected like that, I’ve crossed off a third of Droog’s lists myself-“

“Kid.” Slick knocked back his shot and poured them both more. Thresher growled, but he continued. “Kid. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Do you know what happens when you get ahead of yourself?”

Thresher looked sheepishly at the knife Slick was playing with. Slick put the knife away in the darkness of his jacket, his eyes like pieces of flint, sharp and gleaming. “I’ve been lookin’ out for you for two sweeps now, if you want to stay on the Crew, you fuckin’ listen to me.”

There was silence.

Then.

Thresher swirled his drink in his glass, eyes on the ice. “What if I want to leave?”

“I know you don’t.” Slick answered, starting to puff on his cigar.

Thresher stood from his chair, hissed. “You don’t know me. You don’t even know my name. You’ve never called me by my name.”

“I don’t need to know your stinkin’ name. No one here needs to know anyone’s name. You’re Nines to us.”

“I’m _Karkat_.” He growled, and then there was the cool edge of something just under his neck. Slick tutted at him, stood over him- he was still taller than him, moreso when he was standing straight.

“You’re forgettin’,” He drew the blade under his chin, the point pressing in just slightly. A bead of red ran down the steel. “ _forgettin’_ who you’re speakin’ to.”

He could feel him gulp, the movement pressing through the knife, could see the little veins in the gold of his sclera, could feel the hot puff of his breath on his mouth.

Slick dropped his voice lower. “So what. You really wanna leave the Crew?”

More silence, and then Thresher licked his lips and leaned away from the knife. Slick didn’t follow, but let the tip drag across the underside of his chin, and Thresher stood up and left the room.

~!~

Thresher didn’t leave. At any rate, he had no reason to; had more reasons to stay than leave by then. Partially he just didn’t care, and partially he was the kind of guy to stick to what he knew, and after all that time that was the four of the Crew and a handful of people he didn’t trust.

It didn’t matter. The rumours stopped circulating after a while, or if they continued, they were quieter about it, and that was enough.

~!~

The first time Slick decided to switch from Kid to Thresher Nines properly was another sweep later. He hadn’t even noticed it happening, but it did. Deuce brought it up one night, and Slick was in a good enough mood not to shank him out of spite, for implying that he wasn’t as aware of himself as he liked to think.

Either way, Thresher was all grown up, and it didn’t quite sink in until one other night, when Slick was drifting through the corridors and heard panting in a doorway. First he thought the troll was taking care of a little personal business, and then he realized the grunts were pain.

He opened the door and watched him stitching up one of his stab wounds, watched the bunch and shift of fluid muscle on his dark back, on his rangy arms. He snapped the thread with his teeth and put gauze over the wound, and it stood out on his skin like a white hole in the world until the blood started to seep through. Thresher cursed in pain as he lay down and finally noticed Slick at the door.

He looked at him in silence, still lying on his back with his head turned to the side, tired eyes still bright like embers. Sopor was hard to come by here. “What are you doing up here?”

“I got free reign’a this place.” Slick grunted and licked his teeth, stepped into the room, and kicked the door closed. “So far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter.”

He sat down beside him, watching him, and it struck him how many scars he had now, from past exploits, from Slick’s own knife, standing out just off-black on skin so dark his face was hard to make out. Once too-large features had finally grown in, though there was still a touch something off-balance about it all; large eyebrows, large nose, large, fucked up teeth framed by thick lips.

There were a lot of things wrong with him, a lot of which pissed off Slick, and looking at him just then all sleepy and soft just made him angrier. Slick decided that the best thing to do right just then was to tangle the fingers of one hand in Thresher’s hair and yank him in, kiss him all teeth and tongue and spite. His other hand busied itself with his knife, drew it out of his jacket and held it just under Thresher’s chin when that sickle came up to rest against the back of his own neck, sharp as sin.

Thresher lay back, dragging him down and on top of him with the sickle’s cool weight, hissing when Slick dragged the tip of the knife down and cut him from collarbones to the hem of his trousers. He groaned. “ _Fuck,_ what are you-“

“Shut up.” Slick growled and shut him up by kissing him harder, sloppy with blood. Thresher kissed back just as hard, breathing hard, abdomen shuddering under Slicks’ blade as he crossed the first cut with another and made him groan louder. The sickle bit into his jacket and tore. He dug his blade in deeper for that, in one of Thresher’s old scars.

He gasped. “Holy _fuck, Slick_ -“

“I said _shut up._ ” He yanked his hair again and Thresher tore his jacket the rest of the way, down to his hip, even tore his shirt and left a scratch on him. Slick grimaced and knocked the arm with the sickle away from his back, tore up Thresher’s trousers with a vengeance. He could see just a streak of greyish-pink at his nook, bright against the glossy black, like one of his wounds. His bulge was still behind his sheathe.

Slick pressed his thumb to the sheathe slit and in to the first knuckle, and Thresher gasped in something that could have been pain if he didn’t arch his hips up against the touch, spread his legs further. Like this, Slick could spread the slit open and see the bright red of his bulge still at rest inside.

Thresher took shuddery little breaths, fingers curling in the sheets every time Slick’s thumb pressed down on his bulge, already starting to squirm and slide out in response. It finally did with a wet, soft sound, and Slick started pumping it in slow, even strokes that soon had his fingers shiny with prematerial. Every few strokes were punctuated with a shallow cut and another gasp until the insides of Thresher’s thighs were a delicate lattice of blood.

Beautiful, if Slick said so himself. Thresher’s nook was flushed almost as red as his wounds, and Slick curved his bulge down to it, watched hungrily as it started sliding in and Thresher moaned.

“Why?” Thresher looked up at him, sweat on his face, lust-hazy eyes. It fuelled a fire in Slick’s gut, the softness of that look, and he slapped his palm into Thresher’s bulge to make him yelp, grinding the heel of his hand into it to force it deeper into his nook and make him squirm.

“You wanna know why?” He was panting he realized, hard against Thresher’s mouth as he kept rubbing his bulge, kept the knife against his throat so he wouldn’t move. “I wanna see you afraid of me, want you to fuckin’ _listen._ " He kissed the questions off his lips. “Wanna see you peeled open under me until I can read you again.”

He pushed a finger in alongside Thresher’s bulge and crooked it cruelly, made him raise his hips in pleasure-pain, wrenched out little noises against his mouth. Slick felt calloused fingers close around his wrist, the hand holding the knife shuddering, blade biting slightly into the thin skin of Thresher’s throat. He growled.

“I don’t want you dead, stupid.” He said, and pulled the knife away, then leaned in and licked the hot blood off Thresher’s throat. Thresher moaned. Slick felt the fingers of his other hand on the back of his head, tentative almost.

He bit him for that. His teeth were almost as sharp as his knife, and it made Thresher cry out in what was definitely pain, nook clenching around his fingers. Claws scraped the carapace on the back of his head and would probably leave thin tracks in their wake even in the hard, black chitin. All the same, Thresher’s bulge squirmed, fucking him in counterpoint to Slick’s fingers.

Slick’s hand was dripping when he pulled those fingers out, and still that bulge kept fucking him, sloppy-wet and loud in his ears, loud as their breath. He tsked, and Thresher had the temerity to growl. He laved his tongue over the bite and then pulled back, licking a stripe of red off his fingers with flick of his tongue. Taste of him in his mouth, he licked across his teeth again and sucked off the last of the blood; iron and salt and musk.

He looked down on him, tsked again at the mess he’d made of the troll all fuckdrunk and shaky before him. He could lean down and slit his throat with ease. He’d be too slow to stop him, though he knew he’d try.

“What’d I tell you, ages and ages ago.” He said, not even a question.

Thresher’s eyes burned. “Said you’d make me your whore before you’d kill me.” His hand tightened on his sickle again, and he moved to get on his elbows. “Is that it? Are you going to kill me?” No fear and no hesitation at all past the lust, past the weariness, sick little bastard that Thresher- that Karkat- was.

Slick put the knife away, and raked his own claws up Thresher’s side until he gasped. “Changed my mind, bitch.” He said, knocking his hand away again, nose-to-faceplate with him. “For now.”

Teeth clacked together in the next kiss, Slick reaching down to push his fingers in him again, rougher this time, pumping them in and out and spreading them obscenely. Thresher gripped the sheets so hard that Slick could hear them tear, but Thresher never broke the kiss even when Slick bit him again and drank the blood from the wound.

That sickle hooked over the back of his neck again, pulled him into deepen the kiss. It was Slick’s turn to growl. “Put that damn thing away, I swear to God.”

The point of the sickle hooked into one of his seams like a claw and made him grunt, but Thresher wouldn’t let it up, froze his arm in place with it, eyes flashing in the gloom.

“I’m not your whore either.” He growled into his mouth. The sickle let up only then, Thresher craning his neck and bringing the blade in front of Slick’s face, licking Slick’s blood off the crook of it.

He was so pissed and so hard in his own sheathe that it hurt. Thresher grinned at him. Slick snarled and sucked the grin right off his mouth with another lick of blood, struggling to undo his belt. He didn’t even bother pushing it down his hips, just pushed the cloth out of the way so he could unsheathe with a groan.

He heard Thresher’s breath hitch at the sight of him, thick black length dripping with cloudy, viscous fluid, stiff and ridged all over and so different from a bulge. It was his turn to grin and slide it along the hot folds of Thresher’s nook, pinning his hands to either side of his head. He looked him in the eye.

“Got somethin’ to say?” He asked, watching his eyes as he pressed the blunt, smooth tip against Thresher’s stretched entrance. He could feel his hot pulse there, fluttering and too fast, but Thresher didn’t say anything, only looked him in the eye and growled threatening and low. Slick licked his lips and the grin left his mouth. “Alright then.”

He pushed in with a groan. He could feel Thresher’s bulge trying to wrap around him even from inside, even as he grunted in pain and screwed his eyes shut with all his little teeth bared, his thighs coming up to either side of Slick’s waist and squeezing despite how much that should probably sting. When he pulled out, he felt that bulge follow slightly, and the squeeze of Thresher’s nook made him shudder.

It didn’t stop him from thrusting back in hard, the sound of Thresher grunting and yelping and Slick groaning in time with it filling their ears. The taste of sex and sweat and blood was thick on his tongue when he leaned down and licked across Thresher’s throat again, could feel him purr through it. He didn’t bite more, but he closed his teeth over his throat and sucked, tonguing the places his teeth met skin.

“Slick…” Thresher licked his lips and bared more throat to him, tried to get his hands out of his hold. “Fuck, _Slick_ , ease up, I-“

“You’ll take it is what.” His own voice came even rougher than he was used to, if that were possible. He wasn’t listening to anything else Thresher was saying, focusing on the shudder of his warm body against him, on his nook squeezing him and his own bulge at once, so tight it nearly hurt. It probably hurt for Thresher, even wet as he was. Dripping wet even, wasn’t there something about trolls-

“ _Slick_ , god- _fuck!_ ”

Thresher locked up, arching under him, eyes rolling back and jaw clamped shut with a whimper. Slick groaned again at the squeeze, and it definitely hurt like this, but he could feel fluid filling the tight space, realized Thresher was cumming into himself. There was so much that it left a soft roundness to his gut.

All the same, Slick didn’t stop fucking him through his orgasm until he spilled in him himself. Thresher was twitching when he pulled out to watch slightly-streaked red dribbling out of the abused hole, his sore bulge sliding wetly out of him to slither back into his sheathe. Thresher groaned, and tried to lift his head.

Slick licked his teeth again and zipped up his pants, turning to leave without so much as helping him get a bucket. He heard Thresher make a soft whine as he closed the door.

~!~

It wasn’t one of those things to be talked about, so they didn’t, but of course it happened again, because Slick was finding that there were a lot more things than the killings that pissed him off about Thresher, if not enough for him to slit his throat.

The second time it happened was over some poor dame’s vanity, Thresher’s face pressed to the mirror and his breath misting on the glass as Slick fucked his nook. He spilled all over the wood with a quiet gasp, dyed it red with slurry that wouldn’t quite come out no matter how hard anyone scrubbed it.

The third time was on Thresher’s terms, as much as Slick would let him; against the wall, one of Thresher’s legs hitched over his hip, eyes open and full of fury. His claws left runs and tears in Slick’s jacket, and he couldn’t bring himself to really care even if he growled into his mouth like a monster.

The most recent was, at last, in a bed and late at night. He caught himself looking at the rise and fall of Thresher’s chest in the purplish light of Derse’s atmosphere and counting how many marks he’d left on him over the sweeps that he could see over the blanket. There were hundreds in all that he could remember, more that he couldn’t.

It took him a moment to remember that the troll didn’t fall asleep right away without sopor patches. Luminous red-and-gold eyes met his in the dark, a little flicker of grey tongue passed over inky lips. “What’s on your mind?”

Slick breathed out smoke, tapped ash over the side of the bed. His own eyes gleamed like chips of volcanic glass. “Nothin’ you need to ask about. Get some sleep.”

Thresher rolled onto his side and pushed himself up to sitting. The blanket slipped a lower, to his hips; revealed more scars and some still-healing wounds from their little sessions and then some. “No. Not yet, you contrarian old cumstain. What are you thinking about?” Old paranoia crept into Thresher’s voice, the edges of his words gone sharp despite the soft light.

Again, Slick just breathed smoke in his face, and slid out of the bed. “Like I said, kid. Ain’t nothin’ you need to ask about.”

Thresher frowned. “You haven’t called me ‘kid’ in ages.” Not like he ever had been, not really. Slick kept smoking until he felt the bed dip and Thresher was sidled up beside him, barely a breath away. He could hear his breathing. Slick laughed humorlessly, more a string of huffing little noises like wet little coughs than anything else.

“I’m thinkin’,” He started, paused, breathed out more bittersweet smoke. “That you’re crazy. Always have been. That’s how you got to Derse. That’s how you can look me in the eye without flinchin’ after everythin’ I put you through.” He licked his teeth, then added. “I’m not sure I like that.”

Thresher leaned against him, warm skin still slightly damp, just enough that they stuck together slightly. He mouthed the edge of Slick’s jaw. “Crazy doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

He held his ever-present knife threateningly under Thresher’s chin, and the troll had the gall to pull it away with a hand on his wrist. Worse, Slick let him.

~!~

More and more trolls showed up on Derse as the sweeps went by. Freaks, rejects, refugees; trolls like Karkat had been. With them came a lot more of the cultural baggage they were trying to get away from in the first place, in an ironic, insidious way.

It had been a long time; a time spent getting used to living like a Dersite, forgetting that to his own kind that Karkat’s jewel-bright hue was pariah among pariahs, damned among the damned. But Thresher had learned a sort of ruthlessness on Derse that excused no one; no hellraiser psion nor disgraced highblood.

There were fights, almost constant; one-on-five battles that somehow he came out of spitting and limping and cursing but alive and, often, victorious. He wore the bruises and wounds and broken bones like hard-won hickeys and lipstick stains. The sight rankled something fierce in Slick, and he made sure to cover up each one with fresh wounds he damn near wrote his name into with every stroke.

~!~

Thresher limped back to the hideout one night and was accosted by none other than Slick himself.

“I’m fine.” He said, stiff and immediate as he tried to shoulder past him, and Slick dug a pointy hand into his shoulder, pinning him to the doorframe.

“I can see you tracking blood, you moron.” He said, and pulled back Thresher’s jacket. The immaculate white of his shirt was nearly a third red, and damp. The ragged hole looked like he’d been gored by an animal, flecks of fine, yellow sensory hairs hidden in the blood and leaving no doubt what put it there.

Slick narrowed his eyes and let go of Thresher’s shoulder. “Get Droog to patch that up, then come see me.”

Thresher stumbled. “I can’t-“

“What’s this I hear about _‘can’t’_?” Slick drawled in a way that would have sounded bored if he hadn’t looked somehow more pissed than usual, shoving him further into the room, towards Droog’s little corner of the building. “I ain’t ever taught you about _‘can’t’_.” Another shove, and Thresher was pressed against the door, weight on his wound and Slick pressing into his back. “Upstairs when you’re done.”

He growled and, in a move Slick never anticipated, cracked the back of his skull into Slick’s forehead. The daze forced him to let go, blind with pain, both of them staggering. It probably hurt Thresher more; Slick’s carapace ensured he recovered from the blow faster than his charge, and it only pissed him off further.

He punched him in the side of the face and felt his lip split under the sharp edge of his knuckles. Thresher fell with a pained noise, hand against his mouth where his own teeth had cut him. Blood gleamed on his palm when he pulled his hand away, and he glared up with a pained snarl. “What the fuck is your problem, I said I was _fine!_ ”

“My problem is you’re playin’ with your own _life_ out there, and I ain’t one bit _happy_ about that on professional counts’a you not bein’ in top form when we need it.”

Thresher’s eyes looked like murder. His voice dropped low, the familiar set of his shoulders gone high, horns lowered. Slick thought it made him look younger somehow. “You and I _both_ know there’s nothing professional about this kind of _concern_.”

Slick bared his teeth, fingers itching for one of his knives. He reached for a cigar instead, struck a match, put the cigar in his teeth. “Yeah? What about it? You throwin’ your life away just to spite me, then?” The look on Thresher’s face softened slightly, and Slick snarled before the corner of his scarred lips turned up in a rueful sort of smirk. “How about it then, get yourself fuckin’ _killed_ after all the time we wasted on you makin’ you what you are now.”

A pause, thick in the air, as Thresher licked his lips and gulped, and Slick watched the bob of his throat like a hungry animal. “What if I do get myself killed? What then?”

Slick tsked and blew smoke in his face. “I’ll spit on your corpse. You ain’t the first crewman I’ve lost.”

“Ugh.” Thresher screwed up his face, and then touched the wound with a pained huff. His hand came away still sticky, and he glared at Slick before muttering something.

Slick took another drag. “Speak up, kid. Can’t hear you.”

Thresher took a deep breath, leaning against the door. “I _hate_ you.” He spat at Slick’s feet, eyes bright, as if he’d realized something important, found something precious. “You jealous bastard.”

He said it almost tenderly, except with too much teeth, and then it was as if he remembered he was probably dying by just standing there. He shouldered open Droog’s door.

He didn’t come up to see Slick, but Slick could hear him closing the door to his own room. When he checked on him, he found him sleeping like the dead, and not a sopor patch in sight.

He took a few shots of whiskey and went to bed. He dreamt of the first time he’d pinned him to the bed in that room, and in the dream he said he hated him back.

~!~

Spades Slick knew what it was like to hate someone, the kind of jealous hate that made you want everything someone could give, and hearing Thresher say it out loud wasn’t too much of a surprise. He could admit that he felt the same without shame. Thresher was neither the first man he’d lost nor the first he’d gone pitch for, to use the troll term for it, and he wouldn’t be the last. There was nothing special about that, and he wouldn’t treat it as any more than it was: A mild inconvenience, another reason not to slit Thresher’s throat for stepping out of line, a better reason for throttling him whenever he came back with more marks than Slick put on him.

He never said it back. It wasn’t his style. If Thresher thought he didn’t hate him because he didn’t say it, he was an idiot, because there was nothing tender about the way he fucked him- hands around his throat until his eyes rolled back, or blade slicing patterns across his already mottled skin. One time he’d even carved a spade into his back, deepest he’d ever cut. Thresher had struggled against that until Slick grabbed the base of one horn and squeezed, and he went limp all over but didn’t stop cursing.

Slick made him lick the blood off the knife, and the look in his eye when he did so made it clear he’d rather be sinking his teeth into the exposed skin of his throat. When it was over, Slick put the knife away and tapped the pail with his foot as he did up his pants. “Just be happy I let you use the bucket.”

Thresher muttered. “You only do that because the sheets look like murder when I don’t.”

It wasn’t a lie, and when he got up there was a bloody spade on the already stained fabric. One more wouldn’t make much of a difference. Slick wondered how long it would take him to notice the shape.

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my drafts for over a year now, nearly two I think. To be frank, I came up with it with no internet, at three in the morning, and literally flipped a coin for the quadrant and pulled names out of a hat for the ship. The coinflip actually landed on flush, but let's be real here, I do not have the motivation to go through the whole slow burn of a flush relationship for these two.
> 
> My original vision was to work up to flush feelings that would culminate in a tense goodbye as the Empire took over Derse and Karkat had to leave while Slick and the Crew stood their ground on Derse's moon. I probably won't continue with that, I'm just telling you guys so you can imagine it. Maybe I'll do it someday.


End file.
